On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 10:38:04AM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:> I don't *think* I'm a lunatic, but I'm equally sure that the synaptics is a > pain in the ass and should be capable of being totally disabled somehow, > hopefully short of opening the lappy up and unplugging or cutting every > lead to it until such time as it can be made to behave instead of > responding to every thumb waved 1/2 to 3/4" above it. I've gotten hand > cramps trying to hold my thumbs far enough away from that abomination to > stop such goings on.> > So count this as a vote FOR doing something about the synaptics touchpad > situation.

I'm seeing issues as well on my Dell Inspiron 8000 (yes, it has a Synaptics,NOT ALPS as usual on Inspiron):

(without a mouse plugged in) after random times the pointer exhibitsclear signs of craziness, moving on its own (mild issue) or jumpinguncontrollably (worse) or being completely off-screen most of the time(worst).

IIRC (I'm quite sure about this) the very first time that I've seenthis phenomenon happen on my notebook was around 2.6.9,and I attributed this to broken/grown-old hardware on my notebook(thus from then on mostly running with external mouse attached),but since several people now report very similar issuesone would think that it's a driver calibration or touchpad setup issueinstead of actually broken touchpad hardware.

Plus, I'm sometimes having issues with pointer movement (cursor won't advanceany more unless I stop touching the touchpad for a few seconds to let itreset somehow - probably a bytestream hickup issue).